Thread by @jensthang

@kocienda revealed in great details how truly breakthrough innovations are never about lone geniuses or single Eureka! moments. IMO, companies should credit its people more for all their great work.
amazon.com/Creative-Selec…

Some notes from the book:
1/ We never waited around for brilliant flashes of insight that might solve problems in one swoop, and we had few actual Eureka! moments.

2/ He believed that stripping away nonessential features made products easier for people to learn from the start and easier to use over time.

3/ Steve figured that the best way to answer difficult questions like these was to avoid the need to ask them.

4/ In the same way, software demos need to be convincing enough to explore an idea, to communicate a step toward making a product, even though the demo is not the product itself.

5/ Demos should be specifically choreographed, so it’s clear what must be included and what can be left out.

6/ "Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered." - Donald Knuth

7/ Steve said: “I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.”

8/ We showed demos to each other. Every major feature on the iPhone started as a demo, and for a demo to be useful to us, it had to be concrete and specific.

9/ The point is that concrete and specific examples make the difference between a discussion that is difficult, perhaps impossible, to have and one that feels like child’s play.

10/ Making demos is hard. It involves overcoming apprehensions about committing time and effort to an idea that you aren’t sure is right.

11/ We rarely had brainstorming sessions. Whiteboard discussions feel like work, but often they’re not, since it’s too difficult to talk productively about ideas in the abstract. Think of a cute puppy.

12/ Definition of empathy - see the world from other people’s perspectives and creating work that fits into their lives and adapts to their needs. Empathy is a crucial part of making great products.

13/ Yet when it comes to making products, philosophical discourse is the wrong tool for the job when practical decisions are needed.

14/ Taste is developing a refined sense of judgment and finding the balance that produces a pleasing and integrated whole.

15/ Steve Jobs once said, “Design is how it works.”

16/ Product design should strive for a depth, for a beauty rooted in what a product does, not merely in how it looks and feels.

17/ A properly judged mixture of taste and empathy is the secret formula for making products that are intuitive, easy to use, and easy to live with.

18/ A/B tests might be useful in finding a color that will get people to click a link more often, but it can’t produce a product that feels like a pleasing and integrated whole.

19/ Creative selection: demo -> feedback -> next demo

20/ Concentrating keenly on what to do helped us to block out what not to do. Consequently, our success was as much about what we didn’t do as what we did.

21/ To make products more approachable, designers must lighten the load on people trying to use the things they make. The good news is that I think it’s almost always possible to streamline tasks to make them less taxing.

22/ Ten people edited code on the Safari project before we made the initial beta announcement of the software, and twenty-five people are listed as inventors on the ’949 Patent for the iPhone.

23/ @kocienda's parting advice in his book: Get busy. Decide what it means to do great work, and then try to make it happen. Success is never assured, and the effort might not be easy, but if you love what you’re doing, it won’t seem so hard.

@threadreaderapp unroll